Despite a hectic past two months fighting off a proxy battle with investor Carl Icahn, Yahoo is rumored to be sending out buyout feelers for social-networks company Demand Media.
Yahoo's Hilary Schneider, who was recently promoted to oversee the company's U.S. go-to market operations, traveled to Demand Media's Santa Monica, Calif., offices a couple weeks ago to gauge Demand's interest in a $1.5 billion to $2 billion buyout, TechCrunch reports, citing unnamed sources.
But Demand Media didn't bite, TechCrunch notes, adding that company founder Richard Rosenblatt is said to be seeking a price in the $3 billion range.
A post in All Things Digital casts a different perspective on that meeting.
In an interview with All Things Digital, the Demand Media founder said: "There is a lot of potential here, and I want to build a big company for the long-term."
All Things Digital also cites Yahoo sources as saying there has been "no offer floated" to acquire Demand Media.
But both reports note that a hook-up between the companies wouldn't be a bad idea.
Says TechCrunch:
It just so happens that what Demand Media is good at--generating lots of advertising impressions and creating niche social networks for media sites, may be a perfect fit for at least some of what ails Yahoo.
But should Yahoo want to make a play for the company and force a deal, Demand Media doesn't have the same pressures as Yahoo, which is in its own fix with Icahn. Demand Media isn't publicly traded, at least yet...
With $35 million in new financing disclosed Monday, Demand Media has now raised $355 million in about two years. This leads to an obvious question: what exactly are they planning to do with that money, take over the Internet?
(Credit:
Demand Media)
A spokeswoman for the Santa Monica, Calif., social-media company declined to say if reports of plans for Internet conquest are true. OK, she really said the company didn't intend to comment on the new funding other than to point people to new regulatory filings. This is just the latest in a long string of funding announcements for the company. Demand raised $100 million last year and had earlier rounds of $100 million and $120 million, according to paidContent.org (which picked up news of the funding through peHub).
Demand was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Richard Rosenblatt, who was the CEO of Intermix Media (parent company of MySpace.com) and the chairman of MySpace. Intermix was acquired by News Corp. in October 2005 for $650 million. In 1999, Rosenblatt also sold iMall to Excite@Home for $565 million.
It's way too early to say if Rosenblatt could get that kind of money for his young company. But he has been doing some acquisitions of his own. Earlier this month, Demand announced that it had acquired Pluck Corp., which runs the blog syndication network BlogBurst, for around $60 million.
Smaller acquisitions have been a habit for Rosenblatt & Co., including ExpertVillage.com, which was acquired in June 2007, and Hillclimb Media, which was acquired in August 2006. While Demand executives wouldn't comment Monday, it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see more of the same in the coming months.
OK, so maybe that does explain where all the money is going.
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